The invention relates to a coffee machine with a manually operated lid of an inlet for special coffee and a method for monitoring the position of this lid.
In particular, the invention relates to a coffee machine, controlled by a processor, with an integrated coffee grinder and a powder chute whereby the powder chute serves as a feed line for ground coffee from the coffee grinder to a moveable brewing cylinder and, in addition, has an inlet for already ground special coffee, said inlet having a manually operated lid.
The method in terms of the invention relates to the monitoring of the position of the manually operated lid by the processor for the purpose of the correct initialisation of the operating mode for a subsequent coffee preparation cycle.
Generically similar coffee machines are known, for example, from DE-G-295 08 248.8 and EP-0 658 339. The first shows a device for dosing coffee powder, the latter a method and an arrangement for cleaning a brewing device of a coffee machine. The two documents show that the procedures for dosing, dosing control and cleaning of coffee machines with movable brewing cylinders are well known.
Since for coffee machines of this or similar construction there is always the possibility to alternatively also pour already ground special coffee through a powder chute, which is available anyway, instead of (in the coffee machine) freshly ground coffee, these machines are often equipped with an additional, manually operated flap to provide an inlet for already ground special coffee in the powder chute.
Today, many coffee machines offered commercially have indeed a manually operated flap to actually provide an inlet for already ground special coffee.
What in these cases is often solved in an unsatisfactory manner, however, is the operation and the operating sequence during the production of special coffee. Thus, in order to trigger the making of a special coffee, the selection has to be made manually at the beginning with the aid of a pre-selection via operating elements. Based on such a pre-selection, the machine ‘expects’ that the manual filling of special coffee via the additionally available, manually operated flap has to take place as the next operating step. Faulty operations occur particularly if the pre-selection mentioned above has not been carried out. Then there is a risk of overfilling.